Halloween Costume How-to: Gotye (You Know, the Painted Guy From the "Somebody That I Used to Know" Video)

The folks at MAC invited some of your friendly neighborhood beauty bloggers (me, Megan, Nikki, and Julianne, to be precise) to their Pro Store for a fun little how-to Halloween session! I know—our jobs are the best! First up, my look, which was the all-painted-up look from Gotye's "Somebody that I Used to Know" video. Go big or go home, people.

Here's my little face sans-face-paint to get you situated.

And here's the video to jog your memory:

This is what MAC senior makeup artist Fatima Thomas did to transform me into Gotye:

1) She mixed up a few different colors to create gray-beige, gray, maroon and brown using MAC's Paint Sticks:

2) Then she painted sections of my face set out by this face chart using a foundation brush. The idea was to have slices of faded color around 2/3 of my face: pink down 3/4 of my mouth, maroon above that, another thin slice of gray-white, and two areas of dark gray with a brown area right by my temple.

Now, the key here is to keep the colors from blending at all, so you want to make sure you use a different brush for each color so they don't mix. Don't have that many brushes? Use disposable makeup sponges instead. But beyond that, don't stress. Fatima says, "The great thing about this is this does not have to be really super perfect, because in the video, it’s not extra precise. It’s got this sort of painterly look to it, which is great."

3) Once those were all in place, she went back with MAC Fluidline Liner with an eyeliner brush and painted in lines to separate the colors.

4) And then she set it with translucent powder and sent me on my way.

It was a much faster process than I thought it would be—it maybe took 15 minutes total. And it was apparently immediately recognizable because I had people singing the song to me on the walk home from the studio. Success!